


vitrification

by lady_peony



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Developing Relationship, Don't copy to another site, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Post-Crimson Flower Route, if you squint you can see the pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-28 00:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: He drew his right thumb over the last line in the message, scrawled in the code used by his informants:Target captured and secured. Prime Minister von Aegir is safe.or: Hubert has two conversations.





	vitrification

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings here for minor descriptions of injuries and/or threats of violence. That's just the sort of thing that happens when Hubert appears.

Hubert stared at the paper before him, tapped his finger once, twice on the bottom edge.

The scent of smoke bloomed stronger in the air. The candle on the table had nearly burned down to its wick. He did not get up to replace the candle, though midnight had long draped itself over the sky, or what little of it that was visible from his narrow windows.

It was better that way, though it gave the room a closed-in, almost stifling feel. Smaller windows meant a smaller target of vulnerability.

He drew his right thumb over the last line in the message, scrawled in the code used by his informants:

_Target captured and secured. Prime Minister von Aegir is safe._

He bent his head close to the candle and blew out the flickering flame. Pushed away from the desk and stood. He had somewhere to visit.

* * *

With his hand an inch away from the stone and iron door, he paused.

It's not too late. He could still head to the healing wards now, if he wished. The target would still be there come morning.

He brushed the thought away, as lightly as he would with a leaf on his cloak.

The door he pushed on looked as if it should have groaned ominously, like the kind in the ghost stories Miss Bernadetta was habitually fond of penning during the Wyvern Moon.

However, the door only swung open noiselessly, silent like the swoop of an owl before it pinned and swallowed its prey, head to guts to tail. Of course it would. Hubert had specifically impressed on the guards the importance of maintaining these facilities.

It wouldn't do to give their guest too much warning, beforehand. Hubert descended the stairs, hearing the soft tap of his own footsteps echo away behind him.

Lower and lower and lower. It took around the third set of stairs before Hubert's eyes fully adjusted to the dark.

At the right place, he stopped. Two sconces in the room had been lit, giving off just enough light to see his next steps before him. In the cell in front of him was a man, lank hair cut in something like the style of a pageboy, his eyes flickering everywhere to inspect the conditions of his cell, his lip curling up at every loose piece of straw and stone he glanced at. He had a rangy look about him, like a mercenary's build, but the shifting motions of his cuffed hands whispered warlock.

He seemed no more than a handful of years older than Hubert, though his skin with its waxy pallor and creeping dark lines from his eyes down his face made it difficult to tell. Like a corpse, but not—one of Those Who Slither in the Dark. Still breathing long past his time. 

"Finally," the corpse said. "A rather inhospitable welcome, isn't this, and from the Empire's capital. My name is—"

Hubert waved his hand, a clear, curt dismissal. "That is unnecessary information," he said. He dipped his chin at the tiniest angle possible and murmured, "Hubert von Vestra."

"The Minister of the Imperial Household," the corpse sneered. "Here to see me himself. I should be honored, were your little empire any concern of ours."

Hubert stepped close to the bars, though the prisoner bared his teeth. He wasn't worried. The cell would hold. He had overseen its construction during the first year of Edelgard's reign, with some useful consultation from Lysithea and Linhardt. All magical attempts to escape would redirect a prisoner back to this cell. Nothing short of a Demonic Beast could break through. If that became a problem, the guards were well-trained to raise the alarm about it.

The first question. What to ask? Hubert ran his tongue over his teeth and decided. "What did you do to Prime Minister von Aegir, after his capture?"

The last word lingered with an acrid taste in his mouth.

"Prime Minister von Aegir? So young, to carry such a burden of a title. The one with the minor crest, yes?" The prisoner turned over his hands in their cuffs, looking at them scornfully. "What effort we put in, for such a small prize." He flicked his glance to Hubert, a crafty light sliding into his eyes. "How furious must you be, when we were simply following the same wishes as that precious Majesty of yours."

Hubert breathed out, lifted a hand to his chin, the very picture of curious disinterest. "What lies. These would not be wishes Her Imperial Majesty has ever expressed to me."

The corpse opened both his hands, his palms flat and outstretched. "Your Emperor wishes for a society without Crests." His left hand closed, fingers folding in. "If she has no use for them, we will put them to use." His right hand closed. "Even the weaker ones, we can take."

Hubert dropped his hand from his chin. If he didn't know better, it was as if he had downed one of his own poisonous vials that he kept at his hip. A cold numbness had swelled slowly in his chest, sinking down his spine as the prisoner spoke.

_Ferdinand trapped and afraid, Ferdinand fearful, bleeding as Lady Edelgard once had..._

_Stop. _

"You and yours," Hubert said, low and grim, "will find no quarter, no welcome in this Empire. Don't dare twist her goals with your own."

A laugh, raspy and full of rancor. "We have no need for your Emperor, just now. Von Aegir was more suitable for our plans, after all."

The numbness sharpened, the turn of a chilly mountain lake to winter ice. "Tell me then. What did you do."  
  
"What a stormy expression!" The face in front of Hubert twisted, like metal melting on a forge. Ferdinand was looking at him now, with an expression he had never worn. Malice, sharp and venomous in his eyes, a taunting twist in his mouth. "Don't you want to know what he looked like when he cried?" Ferdinand said, each word dragging in the air like a blade on a palm.

One of Hubert's hands twitched into a fist, gloved silk catching onto his nails.

He released it. Too late, he realized. The impostor, the fake had noticed.

"What's this?" he murmured, cruel delight in his glance. "It seems ice-cold von Vestra has blood in his veins after all, the same as any other weak human."

_Compose yourself._

Faltering on the battlefield can disarm you, wound you, kill you. Faltering here, on the field he had chosen, would do the same.

"Von Aegir is strong," Hubert said, drawing on the coldness under his skin to armor his words in frost. "But you now. Whether you are strong enough to see the next sunrise is in question."

"You speak so confidently on things you know nothing of, little lackey. And—" he said, the malice still glowing strange and discomfiting in the fake's eyes, in Ferdinand's eyes, "that Prime Minister of yours that you place such trust in. I wonder if he would have been more useful to us earlier, if you had been the one wielding the knife."

Another ripple—and Hubert was looking into his own face, a grotesque reflection smiling, all his teeth bared.

_Compose yourself._

Hubert ignored it.

A fist twisted into a collar, yanking the body with it into a dull clang against the bars. A dark bubbling Miasma, started up at the fingertips of his other hand, is thrusted up against the throat of his own reflection.

Hubert wanted him to _burn_.

Ah, but he couldn't.

With his arm in the cell, the Miasma was already dissipating, reacting to the bindings that dampened magic, the ones worked into the cell and its walls by Hubert's own instructions.

Hubert lets go.

His hand, the one tingling from the lost spell, curled in uselessly. Foolish of him, to have forgotten. The impostor looked unfazed, merely gives him an ugly smile.

_Tomorrow_, a colder, more distanced part of Hubert says. You'll get nothing, the way you are now. Come back tomorrow.

Breathing in once, twice, Hubert folded his hands behind his back, straightened his spine. "Think carefully tonight," he said, "what kind of death you would prefer. If I am in an agreeable mood, I may even grant it. Pleasant dreams."

He turned away and left.

* * *

In front of another door, Hubert knocked, three short, sharp raps against wood.

The door pulled in. A knife—no, a letter opener—clutched in a hand emerged in view of the doorway.

"Hubert!" The door opened all the way. Ferdinand lowered the letter opener, his shoulders relaxing.

Hubert nodded, and pushed into the room with his tray. It hadn't been too difficult for him to find a clean tea set in his room.

Ferdinand lit up at the sight of it. "You brought that for me?" He put down the letter opener, pushed aside some papers cluttering a side table to clear space for the tray. The fireplace had been lit, the warmth reassuring, and a candle as well. Light enough to see by, but still dark enough to smooth away some of the shapes and edges of the furnishings in the room.

"Obviously," Hubert said. "Shouldn't you be in the healing wards, instead of your room?" He had intended to sound stern, but it had come out more half-hearted than he meant to. 

Ferdinand, who had tugged over another chair closer to the table with his foot, sat in his own chair, and huffed out a breath. "I did! The Professor and Her Majesty had dropped by too an hour ago, and asked the same thing. Just some rest and decent food, and I'll be fine."

He smiled, before wincing suddenly, an unmistakable flash of pain sliding past his eyes.

Hubert frowned and leaned over Ferdinand. Didn't he just say he had finished seeing the healers?

It was a little hard to see at first, but now, Hubert could spot the faint red cracks running over Ferdinand's lips.

"Ah," Ferdinand said, speaking more softly now. "The accommodations I had been in during the last five days had been...less accommodating than one would expect. And it was a bit of a ride back."

Hubert stayed quiet. He turned away from Ferdinand, to stand over the tea set on the table. With quick motions, he plucked out a cup, poured out the tea to nearly the brim.

He swiveled on his heel, holding the cup, and hesitated.

Looking down at Ferdinand, he saw his right hand was bandaged from his palm up to his wrist. His left hand had none, but it seemed unnaturally still, like Ferdinand was afraid it would shake if he wasn't holding it back by force of will.

Hubert was already holding the cup. The porcelain was still a little hot to touch, even against his gloved fingertips. Briefly, he wished he had knowledge of some kind of cooling spell.

Hubert made a decision.

"Here," he said, and bent down a little, to maneuver the cup just under Ferdinand's mouth. Hubert tipped his chin towards the cup. "Drink."

A moment's pause. Ferdinand looked at Hubert once, then leaned his head back slightly, tacit permission in the motion.

Slowly, Hubert tipped the cup forward. He watched Ferdinand open his lips, first taking one sip, then another, throat bobbing as he drank. The level of tea in the cup lowered, little by little, until it was empty.

Hubert peeled his gaze away from Ferdinand, and folded down his fingers that had been supporting the bottom of the cup and Ferdinand's chin as he drank. While standing over him, one of his knees had been pressing slightly against Ferdinand's; he stepped back until there was space between them again.

The now-empty cup landed on the tray with a soft clink. The only other sound was the whispering crackle of the fire, which threw a glow over the right side of Ferdinand's face, dancing off the fall of hair over his shoulder.

He turned his head to see Ferdinand watching him. The color in his face was a little better now. Hubert cleared his throat. "You have something to say? No need to stand on propriety here, is there, Prime Minister?"

Ferdinand didn't startle, but his lashes lifted, something a little more awake and aware picking up in his glance. "I just," he said, his head leaning now against his left hand, "It's just good to see you, Hubert. As for the mess I made of things, it must have caused no little inconvenience to Her Majesty, and to you. I apologize for that."

Hubert, who had been about to pour out a second cup of tea for Ferdinand after filling his own cup, tightened his fingers around the teapot, and lowered it.

It had meant to be a simple visit for Ferdinand. A surveying trip, about three-days ride from Enbarr, to address concerns about the trade options and winter food supplies in the nearby towns and neighboring villages. The first year of Emperor Edelgard's reign had walked a rocky, though survivable path. The second year had to be, _must be_, done better.

Then _that_ incident.

Somewhere on the road between the second and third town Ferdinand intended to visit, he had vanished. Three of his guards dead. No other eyewitnesses.

Ferdinand's own steed had possessed enough sense to gallop itself back to the royal stables, her flaxen coat flecked with sweat, shaking on its legs. It had no travel baggage, no pack, no reins, nothing but the lightest covering of Ferdinand's livery and armor.

Hubert, who had been rearranging paperwork in Ferdinand's study for his return, had rushed down to the stables as soon as the messenger spoke to him. After sniffing at Hubert's palm, the steed had calmed down enough to be lead into the stables to be rubbed down and checked over.

Hubert narrowed his eyes, and drew them back up from the table to lock onto Ferdinand's face. "Your injuries," he said.

He remembered the unpleasant jolt to the stomach, when he first saw the large swathes of rust-red splashes on the steed's coat, none of which came from the steed, the gaping patches of burned-away armor, the recognizable sickly-smoke smell of offensive magic. And Ferdinand nowhere to be seen.

Ferdinand was here now. A set of circumstances to be vastly preferred.

"Is that your first question? Did you not want to know what other information I gathered first?" Ferdinand lowered his hand, his shoulders straightening back in the same manner he would sit in meetings with this or that guild head or council.

"Save it for tomorrow's report," Hubert said, clipped. Over his knees, one of his hands clenched, until he relaxed it. "I asked about your injuries. Of course I want to know."

Ferdinand opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Alright," he said, glancing off to the side, his face a little pensive. "Nothing too serious, the healers had said. My right wrist is sprained, so no more lance or ax practice for a while. I can still sign papers with my left, so you won't need to worry about that. I won't let my work fall too far behind. Some mild dehydration, a little blood loss. A new scar, over this side," he drew a finger from the edge of a collarbone to trace over and down his left shoulder, "and just the odd cuts and bruises. That's all."

Hubert must have been unconsciously leaning forward as Ferdinand was speaking, until he was nearly standing on his feet.

"You have one. Here." Hubert thought he had been speaking calmly, but the words came out with a biting edge.

His right hand had somehow found its way under Ferdinand's chin, tilting it up. The thumb of his left hand rested against the inside corner of Ferdinand's right eye.

Ferdinand's eyes, darker by candlelight, were wide. Slightly surprised perhaps, but unafraid. He didn't pull away.

Slowly, Hubert dragged his thumb from its spot to the side of Ferdinand's jaw, where an obvious purplish-green bruise had spilled across the skin. He pushed on it as he passed over it, almost as if to rub it away.

Ferdinand had closed his eyes as Hubert inspected him. "By the way, Hubert," he said, voice just barely above a murmur, "thank you for organizing my reports while I was gone. Edelgard told me about it." He opened his eyes. "And thanks for worrying."

_Don't do this again._

Hubert couldn't say that, even if he wanted to. Just by being in their positions, this was a risk they ran; they both understood that very well. Such a promise was not one that he, nor Ferdinand, could make.

Instead, Hubert looked once more at the bruise, and pulled away his hand. Dropped it down to curl around his own untouched cup of tea. "If you would organize your papers by date and names in the future, I would have an easier time of it. Even I have need of sleep on occasion." He lifted his cup. "Besides, you are a necessary part of Her Majesty's cabinet. You cannot carry out your duties if you are not there."

Ferdinand nodded, his serious expression a sharp contrast to his usual cheerfulness. "I understand." He reached out, and squeezed Hubert's hand, once, one bare hand over a gloved one.

Hubert had seen him move. He shouldn't have been surprised.  
  
Regardless, the pulse in his wrist jumped anyways.

He coughed once, feigning that the sip he had just taken was too hot. "Well. Good." There had been other things Hubert had meant to add to that, but he couldn't quite recall them at this hour.

Hubert watched as Ferdinand took away his hand, and yawned. "M'sorry. There was no need to keep you here so long, just to look after me. My apologies, again."

Hubert sipped slowly at the rest of his tea, trying to think of a proper response.

_Because you're the Prime Minister, and one of my colleagues by association._

_Because we're old school friends._

_Because._

Of the reasons he had listed, none of them seemed fully true.

He set his cup down, silently, and stood up, folding his cloak over one arm. Ferdinand mirrored Hubert, walking by his side from the table to the door.

"I don't dislike it," Hubert said to the air, once he was at the door's threshold.

"Hmm? Don't dislike what?"

"I don't dislike looking after you," Hubert said, turning then to watch Ferdinand's face.

Ferdinand's face had flushed to a light pink, the same reaction he had when someone would compliment him on a particularly clever strategy or a particularly persuasive argument or some stupidly noble action he had taken.

"Good night," Hubert said, and stepped through the door, feeling oddly light as it swung shut.

Through the closed door, he heard Ferdinand exhale loudly, once, and then a rushed "Good night Hubert seeyoutomorrow!"

Tomorrow, then. That suited Hubert very well.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ title explanation: [a process by which clay materials bond to become dense and nonabsorbent after firing, as in making ceramics. In terms of chemistry, vitrification is characteristic for amorphous materials or disordered systems and occurs when bonding between elementary particles (atoms, molecules, forming blocks) becomes higher than a certain threshold value.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrification)
> 
> +sexy tea drinking is not a tag that exists, but i was sorely tempted to include it 
> 
> +they didn't kiss in this, but if it makes you feel better there was a high chance one or both of the parties really really wanted to


End file.
